


Believed To Be Seen

by wesleyfanfiction_archivist



Category: Angel: the Series, Eminem (Musician)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-05
Updated: 2005-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 09:14:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7096360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wesleyfanfiction_archivist/pseuds/wesleyfanfiction_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eminem is Nietszche. Wesley is a Rogue Demon Hunter. Love--and hate--save the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Believed To Be Seen

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [WesleyFanfiction.net](http://fanlore.org/wiki/WesleyFanFiction.Net). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [WesleyFanfiction.net collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wesleyfanfiction/profile).

***

"Good show."

He lets the roach of his joint fall into ashes in his palm, shaking a  
rain of sparks to the concrete. "I didn't know you guys really said that.  
Thought it was a PBS thing."

"We guys?" Wesley asks, extracting himself from the web of shadow  
collecting under the stage. "Oh, you mean Brits. In this particular case,  
'good show' meant...quite literally, good show. As in, I watched your  
performance and it was--"

"Just your kind of music," Marshall finishes. "Yeah, you're my target  
audience, tight-assed mystics."

"I did like it," Wesley protests. "Very edgy. I've been through a rough  
patch recently, and I found all that anger soothing."

Wesley's in leather and denim this time, with perfectly razored stubble  
defining his jaw and a crooked pink slash under it. Marshall flashes on  
neat pullovers and corduroy and narrows his eyes. "You're too fucking  
much, man. Cut yourself shaving?"

"I had help."

"Somebody likes you less than I do?"

"Mr. Mathers?" It's Kent, head of security for this show, hired by the  
venue and not cleared to call him anything but that. He looks like  
Marshall's mental image of his killer-redneck stage persona, bleached  
whitewall cut, mad blue eyes, and cheeks layered with sunburn and  
melanoma. "Everything all right here?"

It's still strange to converse with one of the occupants of his head,  
knowing there's nothing behind that steadfast stare but baseball scores,  
pussy, and a waving flag. "Yeah." Marshall gestures at Wesley. "He's a  
journalist."

"He doesn't have a press pass."

"I left it in my jacket," Wesley offers. 

Marshall gives him a sour look, which transfers nicely to Kent. "He's a  
journalist. He interviewed me back in the day. Take a load off, G."

"Whatever you say, Mr. Mathers."

"I say bend over, bitch. Gobble shit right out my ass."

Mad blue blinks.

"Oh, go. Get the fuck out of here."

"Personable as ever," Wesley says, but he's chuckling as they watch Kent  
stump his confused way toward the staff door. "I'm touched you remembered  
my cover after our--brief encounter."

"Don't say that shit, brief encounter. Everything that comes out your  
mouth is on fag filter. It was an _interview_." 

"I'm not homosexual. I'm just prissy."

Marshall laughs so hard it scopes into a cough. 

Wesley gives one of the constipated smiles Marshall remembers annoying  
him during the interview. "Since your budget funded our last outing, I  
feel it's only right to pay this time. Dinner, or just drinks?"

"How about nothing?" He opens the staff door, propping it on the toe of  
his sneaker. The mumble of the crew unscrewing the ground-wood walls of  
the dressing rooms is reassuring, more so than the snagging whisper of  
wind from downhill, much more so than Wesley's voice. Everything he says  
sounds like a question.

"We don't have to discuss...it," Wesley says, with the peculiar brand of  
British tact that throws the questionable matter into a spotlight. "We  
can simply enjoy a spot of something, or get some light Italian--"

"I can eat fucking dinner with anyone, why should I eat it with you? If  
we're not gonna discuss _it_."

"I'm confused."

"This doesn't surprise me."

"Do you _want_ to discuss it?"

"What's to talk about? You being a fucking nutjob? Hey." He lifts one  
hand from his pocket to salute the procession of sound equipment toward  
the waiting trucks. Mal, on point, pumps his fist at Marshall, the  
opposite arm bunched under the weight of an amp.

"You know better." Wesley's voice curls up in his ear like a cat. "You've  
seen."

The hair on his forearms lifts. "I don't see jack shit that means  
anything."

"It means you suffer. Terribly."

"What do you care?"

"I care because I abhor suffering, except by my enemies, and you are not  
one." Wesley takes a step closer. The wind's wet as it breaks around him,  
bruised with darkness and smelling of burned sugar. "I care because it's  
my business."

"How," Marshall asks, palming the back of his shorn head, "am I your  
business?"

"All demons are. _Not_ here," Wesley adds, lifting his finger to  
forestall Marshall's response. "I don't think you want to encourage  
speculation on this topic any more than I do. If you don't want to go to  
dinner, I'm sure you have accomodations somewhere--"

"You know somewhere we won't 'encourage speculation'?" His throat is raw  
and tender, like he's been drinking gasoline, and the dark tears at his  
skin.

"Demon bar on Cisneros," Wesley offers. "They have marvelous  
chimichangas."

"Home sweet home," Marshall says, long past incredulity. "Home sweet  
home."

***

They share a sedan uptown to Wesley's bar, which looks remarkably like a  
Tex-Mex taco dive, faced with mossy slatwork and chipped enamel doors.  
The inevitable plastic pepper lights jiggle as they enter the lobby, and  
canned mariachi music maintains a dull wail.

"To eat at a demon bar, you don't actually have to _enter_ hell, do  
you?" Marshall asks. A brightly colored dashboard senorita switches her  
hips on the top of the cash register. The word "Welcome" is pressed into  
the lime stucco with bottle caps.

"No, why do you ask?"

"Just checking."

"Right this way," the hostess says in perfect three part harmony.  
Marshall schools his bottom jaw to stay locked to the top one. _You've  
seen stranger shit, you've seen stranger shit, you've seen stranger  
shit_, bitch has THREE HEADS, _you've seen stranger shit_...

"Are you all right?" Wesley whispers, ever solicitous, and Marshall  
scowls at him.

"Table or booth?" _ooth-ooth_ , her other voices echo.

"Booth," Marshall answers in his 'now beat it' voice, which has changed  
places with his 'I'm scared, hold me' voice without permission.

"Are you dining-ing-ing?"

"Yes, we are, thank you," Wesley says, charmingly blank. "I already know  
what I want, but my guest is new to the venue."

"Yeah, we'd remember that famous-ous-ous a face-ace-ace." Several smiles  
widen. "We dug your last album-um-um. Good vibe-ibe-ibe."

" _I_ wasn't that into it," the left head puts in. "I'm more of a pop  
person. But what're you gonna do? Unlike some people--"  
it-- _she_ \--looks pointedly to her right "I don't use earplugs. I  
think it's rude. Don't you?"

Marshall clamps down on a growing urge to burst into laughter. Or  
screams. "If my other heads were into Nsync, I'd shut my ears with a  
staple gun. But hey, that's me."

Her lips seal--well, one set of them--and she drops a menu on the  
exquisitely tiled table. "We'll send someone to take your order-er-er."

"Musta hit a nerve," Marshall mutters. "Please tell me they have  
tequila."

"She special-orders their DVDs on the internet," Wesley says. 

"Who, Nsync's?" He laughs. "Never thought I'd say this as a sentence, but  
I feel for her other heads. Tequila? Now?"

"I'll get you a glass from the bar. Please do try not to aggravate any  
guests," Wesley adds. "The scaly fellows at the table behind you aren't  
known for long tempers."

Suddenly, Marshall's menu is very absorbing.

"Man, where the fuck were you?" he barks at Wesley when he returns with  
their drinks--a rather meek bark, in case the scaly fellows also take  
exception to loud noises. "I been sweatin' here!"

"Relax. There are creatures here who feed on fear," Wesley says. "Not  
that they'll mind a nice meal at your expense, but you'll find it rather  
enervating. I got you Jose Gold over ice."

"What you get, a mocktail?"

"I got Jack Daniels, neat." Wesley pushes back his chair and downs the  
drink, disguising a shudder badly. "I've developed something of a taste  
for it."

"Bullshit."

"Well, yes."

"You're a real man, Wes, we get it. You got stubble and everything. Don't  
gotta grab yourself and spit."

Wesley gives him a glare--a real one, hard and colorless. "Need I remind  
you that you're throwing rocks from a veritable glass _palace_ when  
it comes to machismo?"

"Whoa, what a burn." He pauses with his drink an inch from his lips.  
"Speaking of burn, this doesn't have any weird...demon shit in it, does  
it? This is just regular booze."

"Snips and snails and puppydog tails," Wesley deadpans. "I don't think  
it'll kill you."

"I'm fucking serious."

"A refreshing change. It's simply tequila."

He sips. It's simply tequila. He leans over the table when he's done,  
breathing fire of the more accustomed variety, and murmurs, "So is  
everyone here a demon?"

"I'm not."

"Quit busting my fucking balls, Wesley, you _know_ what I mean."

"Places like this tend to be invitation only, or disguised by glamours of  
various kinds. There is one in the back of a crypt in Rome which is  
accessible only on the second day of a blue moon and has to be opened  
skyclad--that's naked to you--by male virgins from--"

"I don't give a fuck."

"Ah. Yes." Wesley pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes dipping shut  
briefly. "Point being that if a human comes to a demonic establishment,  
it's generally because an exception has been made. In this particular  
club, there was a ward at the door, but it distinguishes only hostile  
intentions, not genetics. I chose here because I wasn't sure how more  
strict precautions would impact your, er, heritage."

Marshall takes another, healthier drink, setting the glass back in the  
gleaming octagon of its own condensation. "You're still on about that  
shit."

"Unfortunately, I'm certain about it. I met your father."

"I told you last time, dawg, if anybody is hellspawn it's my ma." He  
surprises himself with a chuckle. "Oh, look. Here comes our waiter.  
Wonder if he has a tail."

"No, but he has excellent hearing," Wesley says, teeth gritted. He turns  
the expression into a smile for the approaching demon, who snorts two  
small, hot clouds from his nostrils and sets ballpoint to order pad.  
"We're ready, thanks. I'll have the chimi with shredded chicken."

Marshall, whose thoughts had been more on being eaten than eating through  
the menu-reading phase of dinner, says "Steak fajitas" and tries not to  
stare.

"Guacamole or pico de gallo?" booms from the demon. Two ice cubes in  
Marshall's glass splinter.

"Jesus Christ. Guacamole."

"Thank you. I'll bring you a basket of our hand-cut tortilla chips."

"You do that. Jesus _Christ_." 

The departing waiter does have a tail, which Marshall refrains from  
bringing to Wesley's attention lest he be accused of missing the point.  
"How you know I'm half demon, anyway? Did he, what, _say_ he was my  
fuckin' old man before he bit it? Acknowledging me, that'd be a first."

"You don't know how lucky you are, escaping your father's attention,"  
Wesley says with feeling. He touches an irregular pock under his left  
cheekbone. "It's not always a blessing, believe me."

"Tell your therapist, man, we're on my clock. _How do you know I'm a  
fucking demon?_" 

An S-shaped creature hovering at the next table spears him with an indigo  
stare. He scowls back.

"Because I know what you see," Wesley says softly. "A friend of mine  
named Lorne went to one of your shows several years back. Not usually his  
kind of music, but he was inspired to investigate by certain patterns in  
your life. He explained to me that it was your curse to see the worst  
potential of all creatures, human and demon alike. A sort of negative  
prescience, if you will. You look at a flower and see only its withering.  
It was at that point that I first chose to seek you out. You may recall  
you were less than receptive to the idea that you were part demon."

"Yeah, demon. 'cause of course there's no _human_ pessimists."

"It's more than mere pessimism." Wesley dips into the hand-cut tortilla  
chips as their waiter deposits them. "Mmm. Very good. And their salsa is  
to die for, try some."

Marshall reaches for the basket, then pauses. "That 'to die for' shit  
isn't, like, demon hunter humor, right?"

"I would never employ such cowardly methods."

"Didn't mean to _impugn_ your _honor_ ," Marshall says, stuffing  
a laden chip into his cheek. It goes numb, but in a way he cautiously  
associates with heavy jalapeno rather than a Satanic curse. "Not bad. Too  
much cilantro."

"Oh, don't I know it," Wesley says, rolling his eyes. "I've even put that  
in the comment box, but you'd think it led to another dimension for all  
the response it gets." He purses his lips. "You know, I'd never  
considered that possibility--"

"Cut the crap, man. What am I, the Little Demon that Frowned? Spreading  
bad news and rain clouds over the Bible Belt? I gotta tell you that as  
mystical powers go, Perma-Bitch sucks--"

"You differ from a human pessimist in that what you see is objectively  
true. The weaknesses you perceive are indeed there, not just products of  
paranoia. Whether or not the person who has them will realize the  
grotesque potential you see is a matter of choice and chance, but your  
Sight itself is clear."

Marshall laughs after a moment, clicking down his half-empty glass. "And  
I always just thought it was a shitty world." 

"Sometimes it is."

Marshall tilts his head, smiling just enough to mar his cheek. "How our  
little boy's grown."

"You're not the only one whom time has changed."

"Time didn't change you," Marshall snorts. "You did. Along with your bank  
balance. That much leather don't come cheap."

"So quoth the man in three hundred dollar sweatpants!"

"Step off, I never said I wasn't a phony bastard." Marshall chuckles  
through another mouthful of demonic salsa. "Here's some hot gossip. I'm  
not even blond."

The door opens, admitting a gust of smoggy air and two cloaked figures.  
The string of lights overhead flickers, causing a momentary welling of  
shadow from Wesley's features and making Marshall's pale head gleam.

"Seeing that things suck doesn't seem like much of a skill," Marshall  
remarks, swallowing.

"It's not seeing that _things_ suck," Wesley answers, voice  
abstracted. His eyes cut to Marshall's left. Their waiter thumps slowly  
up the aisle between rows of tables, pursued by the chatter of ceramic on  
tile. "It's seeing that _people_ suck, and people do things. In  
fact, people do _everything_. Imagine if you saw Hitler while he was  
still a frustrated artist, or the hijackers of the airplanes that crashed  
into the Twin Towers while they were running training simulations?  
Imagine if you saw the man who would release a world-killing virus days  
before he was fired from Stanford? There are forces that would find such  
a power compelling, could it be harnessed."

"Good forces, you mean. Like, Jarheads for Jesus."

"Not necessarily." Wesley darts a surreptitious look over one shoulder,  
hunkering down behind the varnished arch of the booth. "Tell me, have the  
fellows behind me managed to progress into the building?"

Marshall squints, swinging aside the piercework lamp. "No, they're  
hanging in the lobby. Why? They friends of yours?"

"They're not friends of anyone's." Wesley's voice drops a register. "I  
hope you're not terribly attached to your driver or security men."

"Why the fuck not?" The tips of his fingers tingle as his heart sounds,  
loud and low.

"The Tokar are not known for their mercy."

"The what? You mean they _offed_ my fucking--"

"Relax," Wesley says, subdued but somehow penetrating, and closes warm  
fingers around Marshall's wrist. "Look at me. Nice, normal, calm  
conversation. Just two patrons having appetizers. I'll let you know when  
we need to take more vigorous measures."

" _When_?"

"As I was saying," Wesley says, voice planed to an edge, "it's not only  
the doers of good who'd have interest in your skill. You see the worst  
 _potential_ , Marshall, but most of us don't live up to our  
potential. At least not without a little nudge in the right--or  
wrong--direction. The art teacher who ridiculed Hitler's efforts. The  
soldier who killed the families of the hijackers. The employer who cut  
the scientist off without a cent. What if you could provide that impetus  
at just the right time?"

"Then things would suck." One of the hooded figures starts gesticulating  
at their waiter, who stamps his foot on the terra cotta. Marshall hears a  
glassy crunch, followed by grating as he drags his toe back, bull-like.

"Yes," Wesley says tensely. "Change people, you change the world. As you  
well know."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You sing about it. Changing the youth by affecting them at pivotal  
times. Making their lives bearable. Using creativity as an outlet for  
anger. Though I might question your hopeless approach, it's hardly  
surprising given your gift."

"Gift? Look, those whatever-they-ares have sticks now."

"Dear God," Wesley breathes. "Are they red with a slight glow at the  
end?"

"That's bad, isn't it."

"Only if you can't breathe fire--"

A cloud of red cascades over the room, crackling above them behind a  
warning flare of blue. Wesley exhales. "Small mercies. They kept their  
flame-retardant charm to code. Best head for the back, shall we?"

Their waiter snatches one of the gaudy candle jars lining the front  
counter and dashes it on the floor. Two lines erupt to either side of it,  
blazing toward the invaders and raising walls of gold as they go.

"They're shaking their sticks again," Marshall notes, with a certain  
detachment, and Wesley clamps a hand over his arm and hauls him toward  
the kitchen. He's aware of a variety of snouted, scaled, and ephemeral  
staff parting to either side of him as the door bursts in.

"The cooler," Wesley barks. "They're Tokars."

A black man, human by all appearances, hustles a cartload of trays out of  
the way of a battered metal door. "Right through here."

"Uh-uh," Marshall yelps, "that's not through, that's _in_. With no  
out. I ain't going in an _in_ with no _out_ \--"

Wesley, who's considerably more wiry than his bearing suggests, lugs  
Marshall into the dim, blood-scented cold by main force. The door clangs  
home behind them, followed by a series of final-sounding clinks. Silence  
spreads to the corners of the space like frost filling a windowpane.

"What the fuck, you just let a bunch of demons lock us in the  
 _freezer_?" His voice cracks. "There are hooded things coming after  
me with fucking flamethrowers and you stick us in a goddamn dead end!"

"They're not after us," Wesley says gently. "They're after you."

"But _why_?" He's aware that his voice is jiggling up and down and  
elects to blame the chill.

"Because their goal is to bring about annihilation. Tokars are servants  
of the Void."

"And giving me a crispy coating ends the world?"

"No, enslaving your mind to the will of the Nameless does." Marshall  
opens his mouth to ask, already knowing better, and Wesley halts him.  
"Nameless. Old One. Harbinger of Universal Death. A story for another  
time. The Nameless can use your skill to unpick the order of the  
universe, one life at a time. I have a feeling it wouldn't take long.  
These things tend to build a momentum of their own."

Protest spent, Marshall hugs his cold-prickled arms to his chest. "I'm  
flattered. I think. Still not getting the freezer plan."

"It's not a freezer, it's a cooler. I'm not suicidal. The ambient  
temperature in here is around forty two degrees--"

"Thank you, Mr. Fucking Wizard--"

"And therefore inimical to the function of their blast lances."

Marshall pauses. "You mean those sticks don't--"

"Don't work in temperatures below sixty degrees Fahrenheit. If perchance  
the bar's defenses fail and the Tokars breach this door, they'll simply  
be angry weaklings in meters of fabric."

"Like you at your college graduation," Marshall says, good humor  
restored. He ignores Wesley's scowl. "So we sit in here until they go  
away."

"Yes. Their vision is heat-based as well, so I hope that they'll be  
thrown off by the ambient temperature."

Marshall narrows his eyes. "Or we'll stand out like two pimples on an  
untanned ass."

Wesley frowns, tugging the sleeves of his shirt over his bony wrists. He  
seesaws a row of frozen chickens as he leans back against the dimpled  
wall. "It's possible."

"It's _possible_?"

Wesley gives an eloquent eyeroll, pushing his hands into his front  
pockets when the shirt trick doesn't avail. "It won't matter how warm we  
are or aren't, because they'll bloody well hear you squawking before they  
get past the staff."

"And how the fuck do you know the staff isn't gonna open up and let them  
in?"

"No one but the Nameless aids the Tokar. Even the worst of demons abhor  
nihilists." Wesley smiles absently, recrossing his legs. "Rather amusing,  
someone _abhoring_ a nihilist, when you stop to consider."

"Yeah, Adam Sandler needs to add that one to his act. Define nihilist,  
Wes. Twenty-five words or less, no adverbs."

"Nihilists are those who want nothing. They want all things to return to  
the Void. No binaries, no relativity, no words, no love. Nothing matters  
to them--hmm. Another pun."

"You're killing yourself. I can tell. So these nihilists, they  
 _don't_ want hell on earth."

"Very good. Hell would be something."

"So they're Buddhists with boom-sticks?"

Wesley's mouth curls at the corners. "Hardly. Buddhists believe in the  
existence of a continuum. They just don't believe in affecting it."

Marshall snorts, twin jets of condensation smoking the air. "That's some  
crack-ass shit."

"I'm sure Siddhartha would bow before your eloquent dismissal."

"Whatever. You're nipping out, Mr. Wizard."

Wesley caves to an all-body shudder, hugging his crossed arms to his  
chest. "It's damned cold in here. I wonder if they've gone."

The door to the cooler deforms with a bark, its surface broken into broad  
bowls of ripple. The light below it flickers red.

"I'm thinking no." Marshall's synapses strive for the clarity survival  
brings, the fighting edge he's tried so hard to keep that he verges on  
self-parody. He's spent his life in one kind of corner or another, but  
he's not sure he's ever learned how to escape, just be pissed off that he  
can't.

"Remember," Wesley mutters. "Angry weaklings in meters of fabric."

"Two on two," Marshall echoes, edging away from the writhing door. The  
handle starts to rattle, spitting screws on the tile. "Even odds, right?  
We got it. We got the skills."

"I have a few surprises up my sleeves," Wesley begins, then pauses.  
"Well, I would if it were a bit cooler. Left my coat in the car. But I'm  
sure we won't need knives."

"Does it seem like it's warming up in here?"

"A bit, yes."

"But not warm enough for them to continue to _incinerate us_ after  
the door's down, right?"

"I. Erm. That is, I'm almost sure the fuel capacity of their weapons  
won't allow for that duration--"

Marshall grabs a tray of dinner rolls and bangs it over his knee, popping  
them up in a geyser. They skitter to all corners. He hides behind one of  
the catering carts with the metal braced from head to shoulder. "You can  
be almost sure all by your fucking lonesome."

"Wise precaution," Wesley says, reaching for a second tray as the door  
starts to dissolve from the middle out. Banshees of flame cry at the gap,  
and reeking metal inches across the floor.

"I can't remember a prayer," Marshall whispers. He has no idea if Wesley  
can hear him. It doesn't matter. "Not one single fucking prayer."

The Tokars step through the door while the edges are still fire-toothed.  
They look like angry weaklings with flamethrowers. Marshall licks sweat  
from his lip and watches Wesley through ripples of heat. ~Almost sure.  
Put that on your fucking tombstone.~

He stands, dropping his tray with a clang. He doesn't especially want to  
be char-broiled to it, anyway. "So, you got us. Now what?"

The figures shuffle forward. The gelid light of the fire doesn't  
penetrate the black beneath their hoods, any more than it would burn  
soot. 

"Newsflash. You automatically lose a staredown if you don't have eyes."  
He folds his arms. The Tokars remain as still as gravemarkers. "Oh, man,  
you _are_ scary. I never been _stood_ at before. Can we get on  
with this?"

"They don't speak," Wesley says from his shelter, voice doubling as it  
caroms from the propped tray. "They await the Nameless--"

**I have come.**

A wall of fire roars from the foot of the doorway to the ceiling.  
Marshall feels his eyelashes curl. His lids sting when he blinks, and a  
stripe of raw skin spreads over his nose and cheekbones. 

He coughs out heat. "Neat trick. Ventriloquists, too?" 

**Pain?**

"No thanks, trying to cut back."

**Fear?**

"What the fuck do you _want_?"

**For you to know that you are suffering.**

"I've had worse sunburns. Look, either smite my ass or let me go. The  
chicken's dripping on my good shoes."

Wesley emerges, dusting curls of ash from his shoulders and hair. He  
stares at Marshall for a moment. "You're a striking shade of pink."

"There's a switch."

"I'm not in the least fond of pink. You know, you're quite lucky. Most  
people never hear the Nameless speak, yet it seems you do?"

"Yeah. I _feel_ lucky." 

"Let me think for a moment, I'm sure I can come up with something."

"Don't strain yourself."

**Things fall apart.**

A blow strikes Marshall, hollow and sick, like stepping on a milk carton  
that's been sitting in the sun long enough to bulge. He smells Comet and  
pea gravel and urinal cakes. His knees sag, pain biting in over his left  
ear. 

_I remember this feeling. I remember._ "I remember this, what the  
hell, you gotta go back to a bully to make me bleed? Get some fucking  
imagination!"

Ghost blows land on his kidneys, and ghost pain blooms, like red  
jellyfish drifting through shallows. Beautiful sting, leaving his  
extremities cold. He's always shunned poetry, but there's something  
seductive about being numb enough to think in it. He flows away.

"Marshall," Wesley whispers intently.

_His fingers curl on the floor. His other fingers curl on wall the  
color of the shit that rises to the top of his grandma's Carnation  
Instant Breakfast, and he pulls himself up. The boy's gone, but he still  
can't see out of his right eye. Motions that used to come naturally send  
cut-up Coke cans of pain sawing through him. He thinks, nothing this  
simple should be this fucking hard_. 

"Marshall, is It still talking to you?" Wesley tugs at Marshall's arm  
experimentally. The degree of yield approximates the branch of a three-  
or four-year-old tree. 

"Under other circumstances I'd be captivated," he says uneasily, watching  
the fire play in Marshall's glassy eyes. "Most scholarly speculation on  
the Nameless suggests that as the embodiment of annihilation, it is  
voiceless and doesn't make efforts to communicate. Clearly that's not the  
case. It would be helpful if you'd give an eye-witness report--you know,  
blow by blow. If you can _hear me_." He claps his hands loudly.

_Marshall's to the part where things go bright gray while he's reading  
a comic book and a comma of blood daubs one of the pages. He wrote about  
it in a song, but that was reconstruction. He doesn't remember it very  
well. He isn't sure if he was playing a video game or reading, or if it  
was sunny, or what was on the stove._

_Debbie turns to him with black, shining eyes and flips the channel.  
Wheel! Of! Fortune! _"Don't trouble me, baby. Don't trouble me right  
now."

_He flunks ninth grade four times, flickers of four dim hot classrooms  
and black-blobbed seventies nature films and girls making fun of his  
pants. He sucks at geography. Has two counselors, same tests. Lawsuits  
for hurts he's forgotten. Always riding in the same backseat with the  
upholstery split and the lingering stink of brown banana. He says goodbye  
to four sets of friends, the only difference there was between places.  
He's never any of his fathers' son. He's only his mother's son in  
company._

"My life sucked," Marshall whispers through parched lips. "So what."

**Yes. So what.**

"So what's the reason, is what you're saying?"

"Marshall," Wesley hums, anxiety mounting. "Can you bloody hear me at  
all?"

Just when he's about to give in and deliver a slap, Marshall's chin eases  
down an inch and snaps up, puppetlike. "Yeah. Just hard to care. Sorry,  
Mr. Wizard."

"You must care," Wesley says intensely. "It's important. I know it  
doesn't seem that way--I know nothing does--but it's not the first time  
for that, is it? You kept going anyway."

"I want to hear It out."

"There is no possible reason to listen!"

"There's always a reason to listen."

"You must _fight_ \--"

"What the fuck you know about fighting? I'm sick of fighting. I'm tired."

 

"You think I'm not, you lazy little prat?" Wesley blazes, unheard.  
Firelight swarms over Marshall's scalded skin. His eyes roll back.

_He looks down into crowds. Small dirty crowds steaming with sweat and  
stomped-off snow, dark hands with creased pink palms surrendering to the  
smoky air. So many hoodies, it looks like a monastery. So many titties it  
couldn't be. Labels flag the air--white trash, invader, wannabe. His  
fight against them will define him. He can feel his new shape, hollow at  
the center of their regard._

_More crowds. Molten faces. Black mouths barking recognition. The first  
white people who come to hear him who aren't fused beneath the concrete  
blanket of poverty call him hip, call him edgy, call him nigger-lover,  
call him evil, and each epithet is another star in his constellation. _

_I am who am **not**._

"Good God," Wesley mutters, when clapping doesn't rouse Marshall's  
attention. Brushing past him is like elbowing a gargoyle. He snaps his  
fingers before the Tokars instead, whose impenetrable hoods bow toward  
the floor. "Hallo?"

Nothing. He's not terribly surprised. They don't give off the energy  
displacement of conscious beings--appropriate, he supposes, for vessels  
of annihilation. The Nameless defines their purpose.

He coils his body, ready to spring back, and pokes one of them on the arm  
with his fingertip. Nothing.

"If I were to, say, push you back into that up-going wall of fire behind  
you, would you have an objection?"

Still nothing. 

"It can't be this easy." He stands back, wiping his damp hands down the  
seams of his jeans, then drops his shoulder for a short charge at Tokar  
the first.

Ten seconds later, he recoups, lying on his back in a puddle of chicken  
blood. "They apparently resist physical displacement, too," he mutters,  
because Cordy and Gunn aren't at his side with something wittier. He  
suspects it'll take more than a wardrobe change to break that old  
expectation, more comforting than a pen in his pocket.

_The crowd grows carnival clear. Their bodies gleam under the  
morgue-bright light, lush and empty as neon tubing, but no artist would  
use that medium to capture spilled ketchup and cellulite. _

_Marshall can see the eighty-sixth row as plainly as he sees the first, a  
sea of pimples and neck hair and nose-wiping, Nike swooshes and Coke  
ribbons and lopsided breasts, but beyond the physical, he sees  
_them _. A daughter who's slowly pilfering antiques from her dying  
mother's attic. A boy who pushed up a drunk girl's skirt at a party and  
took pictures, then sold them on the internet. A man who could bury the  
claws of a carpenter's hammer in his baby son's skull if he pulled the  
tape out of his favorite superbowl highlights video. A mother who'll  
catch her rich boyfriend on top of her fifth-grade daughter in their bed  
the next afternoon and just tiptoe away. _

_He knows. He's always known. He sees the world through concrete-colored  
glasses. Everything's waiting to die._

"My life sucks _and_ people suck. This is supposed to be news?"

Wesley stiffens, pausing in wringing essence of raw chicken from his  
pants cuffs. It's been nearly a quarter hour since he's heard any sound  
but his own breathing and the eerie rustle of the flames. "Marshall?"

"Get to the goddamned _point_!"

_He knows good and goddamned well he's not signing autographs, even  
though he can smell the narcotizing whiff of Sharpie marker and hear it  
screek over his own shiny image. But it feels like he is. The  
fragmentation itself is familiar; it's how he feels every time he does  
publicity, like part of him is watching while the rest of him whores. Now  
people call him _Slim _and_ Em _. He scribbles each one over a  
miniature him, black lines sewing up each mouth._

_**Isn't it exhausting answering to so many names?** asks a freckled  
blond with braces._

_"It's my choice," he says, handing a battered pass to her with 'Shady'  
scrawled on it. A freckled redhead replaces her._

_**What if you didn't need to make it?** the redhead asks._

_"You know, that makes so much sense," he says. Screek. He writes 'Eminem'  
for this one. "Just destroy the entire planet and I could shorten my  
monogram. Don't know why I never did it before."_

Wesley breaks off trying to wrest the blast lance from Tokar the second  
to breathe a laugh. He's managed to turn both of their weapons so they're  
pointed at one another, though the effort is not unlike rowing a steel  
canoe through wet concrete. Pulling their triggers will be harder still.  
They're mystically coded for demonic operation. 

He rubs sweat from his top lip and surveys Marshall blankly, thinking. He  
looks like hell--skin so red his hair is white beside it and his lashless  
eyes streaming--but he seems to be holding his own against the will of  
the Nameless. Wesley knows how very seductive that is.

"I'll get us out," he says, touching one rigid forearm. He can detect the  
faintest tremble under the skin, like the surging of a generator. "Just  
don't bloody cave on me."

_**You aren't ending the planet. There is no planet. It's a lie you've  
penetrated one layer of, and that has stolen much of your hope. You see  
the meaninglessness of what surrounds you, but don't know the reason for  
it. That reason is the Void. The Void is all that is real,** a black  
man with a six-pack and biker shorts tells him._

_"Seems like an awful lot of effort for the universe to go to, then,  
making strip malls and Velcro and shit."_

_**Why does mold grow in a petri dish when it's placed there by a  
swab?** _

_"Who gives a fuck?" He signs the forty-year-old woman's sagging breast.  
Her daughter, perhaps fourteen, hides her black-lined eyes in  
embarrassment._

_**Yes. All that matters is that it doesn't matter. So why do you  
despair?** _

_"My mommy didn't read me stories. What are you, my fucking therapist?"_

_A pale man with a combover says, **All around you is the Void. It's bred  
into you, your birthright and your blessing. Entropy. Decay. The  
assurance there's no purpose. You thrived in Detroit because of it,  
sprang up like a weed on iron air and rootlessness. That was why your  
father left you.**_

_"What?" He passes a starter cap back to a rangy boy with white crust at  
both corners of his mouth._

_**His kind never remain with their young, because their young grow most  
truly when alone,** the boy explains. **They come to understand  
absence. They are the Tokar.**_

_"No--Christ,_ what _? Those things who killed my crew? No!"_

_**Don't despair. It doesn't matter. Heritage, meat, flesh, time--what  
are they? What lies beyond them is limitless. Peaceful. It's like tearing  
buildings from a block. Suddenly that space could be anything.** _

_"I'm not a fucking killer!"_

_**You're nothing at all. Put down the pen. Turn your back on them. You  
want to. You've been wanting to since it started.** _

_"I'm so tired," Marshall whispers. "I'm so tired."_

"Marshall," Wesley says, alarmed. The incantation he's been composing to  
pick the demon-lock on the lance falls into motes of light. "Damnit.  
Marshall! Don't listen to it! Can you still hear me?"

Marshall's hands move, every tendon grotesquely drawn against the flushed  
skin. He makes a diminutive pushing gesture, then casts something  
invisible aside. "Fuck you. All of you. I'm done."

_**Doesn't that feel right?** _

"Turn my back on 'em," Marshall mutters. His feet shuffle as he circles.

"Turn your back on who?" Wesley demands, pitching his voice for  
penetration. "Listen to me!"

Watery blinking. "Fucking fans."

Wesley's mind races. Turning Marshall's back to his considerable fanbase  
is an interesting win for the Nameless, but not a useful one. Humanity's  
undoing needs a carrier, preferably one who contacts thousands per  
continent on a frequent basis. The rejection has to be metaphorical, a  
surrender of those things Marshall does value. "So--you're giving up  
music, then?"

"Just...just givin' up sharin'..."

"Ask your new friend how much music exists in a vacuum."

**Ask your near-stranger if he grasps the meaning of the word  
'annihilation'. Where there is nothing, there is no reason for music.  
Just a skyful of closed eyes. Death and his brother, Sleep.**

Marshall laughs, gusty and weak. Another tear glitters his cheek. "Ain't  
slept for a while."

"And would you wish sleep on the rest of us too?" Wesley asks. It's  
harder than he expects to force an edge on his voice in the face of  
suffering he knows so intimately. There have been days--many and  
dark--when he's wished that death-in-life upon himself. When he felt he  
was deserving of punishment, or when he merely craved the rest. 

"You tryin' t' save your ass, Mr. Wizard?" Another wispy chuckle.

"No," Wesley says, and then he has it. Marshall's song hands him the key.  
What matters to him? Only one thing. "I'm trying to save your daughter's.  
Since you seem to have forgotten her."

Marshall's parched lips part. "My...my baby?" 

The flash of shock in his eyes is potent and moving, enough to make  
Wesley taste quinine on the back of his tongue. He can't conceive of that  
expression inhabiting his own father's face, or of the attendant love  
being powerful enough to duel with annihilation. 

**You know the truth of your daughter's life,** you **alone. What  
potential did you sense? She lives, she dies. She does nothing! **

"Or she does something wonderful," Wesley says gently. Marshall's muscles  
are softening under the press of his hand. "That's as dark to you as to  
any parent. But I have a feeling you want to find out."

_The endless crowd waits for Marshall. He's starting to understand now;  
Wesley would be proud of him, if he felt inclined to explain it.  
Christina, Chris Kirkpatrick, Will Smith, Fred Durst, Debbie. He's never  
been afraid to name them._

_"You know what I don't get?" Marshall asks a Hmong boy with a brush cut.  
"Why you bozos would think I'd hop on board for a world without pussy."_

_He thrusts both middle fingers high in the air and salutes the host of  
the nameless, laughing._

Both Tokars lift their heads, embued with borrowed will, as Marshall's  
body falls. Wesley swings around, one fist driving back at his side and  
the other flinging out instinctively to strike. The air fills with the  
whine of powered fire.

_"Ragoth,"_ Wesley rasps, reaching for the dropped threads of a  
shielding charm and knowing it to be hopeless. _"Cyaranth--makel--"_

Both weapons fire. Somewhat to Wesley's surprise, they each incinerate  
the opposing Tokar. Twin cloaked bodies thump to the floor, gusting  
smoke.

Marshall chuckles weakly from the floor. "Vast cosmic power, itty bitty  
living space."

"Indeed," Wesley says, brushing a new and fetching color of ash from his  
shirtfront. He smells like a rubbish fire. "Something to be said for  
independent thought."

"Indeed. Any idea what the fuck to do about Flaming Faithful?"

Wesley sighs. "I'd rather hoped that would cease when the Tokars slayed  
one another."

"Hey, at least we got chicken." He flicks one marinated breast cautiously  
toward the door, where it starts to sizzle. "Shit thing about dying like  
this is, you can't even warn your kids. 'Stay away from them demonic taco  
dives, and if anybody's bong starts glowing, run.'"

"You seem rather chipper," Wesley notes. His lips move faintly as he  
measures the span of flame.

"I think it's because I went batshit nuts. Not sure." Marshall collects  
himself and stands, parting from the floor with a 'schluk' of gelid  
blood. He crouches over one of the Tokars, stretching a not entirely  
steady hand toward its hood, then draws back. "You knew, didn't you."

"Knew what?" 

"That I was half...that."

"Oh. Erm. Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I suppose I didn't see the reason. You were inclined to deny even your  
demonic origin, so the species didn't seem important."

Marshall closes his fingers around the greasy sackcloth of the Tokar's  
robe, steadying himself. "So, they hairy? Spiny? Warty?" 

"No one knows."

He pulls back. Fabric parts from flesh with a throaty sound. "Jesus  
Christ!"

Wesley drops the pencil he's been using to scrawl on the floor. "What?"

"It's me it's Christ it's fucking _me_ it's ME--"

"It's not you!" Wesley snaps to cut through his panic, after a  
dumbfounded moment spent confronting the resemblance. "He's very like  
you, but look at the hair--and the eyes, they're a different color--"

"Why the fuck does it look like me?" His voice cracks. "Do they all?  
Fucking race of mes out there pretending to be human--"

Wesley tilts his head to one side, fireglow spreading against his smutty  
cheek. "A more likely explanation is that he's your father."

"He..." Marshall's voice reduces in his throat, and he swallows.

"There's a strong male genetic inheritance in your family. And it would  
explain how they tracked you."

"I thought you offed him!"

"You assumed. I never did, though I encountered his work more than once."

"Hi, dad," Marshall says, tangling his fingers in shorn hair. "I've been  
wanting to do this for years." He spits in the dead Tokar's face.

"Everything you dreamed?" Wesley asks drily, on his knees again. He  
outlines the markings he's made with a ring.

"Eh."

"Want to back up a bit? You're in my light."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"A shielding charm, I hope. One...more...hmm." He puts his finger to his  
mouth, nibbling the sharpness from a hangnail. "Needs a mark where your  
foot's--there, thank you. All done."

"Now what?"

"Now you walk through fire for me." The corner of his mouth twists. "I  
know, we barely know each other. Consider it a whirlwind courtship."

"Is there any reason for me to believe that isn't like, twenty fucking  
miles of solid flame hotter than the sun's asshole?"

"No."

"Is there any reason for me to believe we're on _earth_?"

"Not really. Your paranoia is rather inventive, isn't it?"

"Why should I do this?" Marshall asks, voice robbed of strength. "Give me  
something here, Mr. Wizard. I got a kid."

Wesley puts an arm around him, palm resting flat against his back. "Trust  
is the only reason I have. I'm sorry, Marshall." Quieter, "I know how  
hard it is to give."

Marshall stoops enough to drop the gray fold of hood over his father's  
face. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

***

"I was right, wasn't I," Marshall asks Wesley. The man bandaging his  
burned arm, one Tyrell Banks, breaks his awed stare long enough to reach  
for the tube of ointment. "We need the--the lie of meaning. We need it to  
live."

Wesley studies him. "Do you truly believe your child's life has no  
significance?"

"I can't," Marshall answers after a moment, with a minimalist shrug.  
"Doesn't mean it's not true."

"It's right, you know. The Nameless."

Marshall lifts his lashless eyes, raw with heat and dryness. Several of  
the vessels are broken, spilling their freight of blood on the white.

"Walls, family, time, fads, music, it's all--nothing, by itself, all a  
construction. What makes it real is how you _feel_ about it. Emotion  
is real, Marshall. It's powerful. You betray your friends for it. Women  
leave you for it. You lie for it. Kill for it. Turn yourself into  
something you hate for it. Die for it. If all of that is real, then so is  
your faith in your daughter."

"Someday, you're gonna have to tell me what bitch fucked you up."

"It was initially an overprotective father." He frowns. "Both times."

"You think we could hook him up with Debbie?"

"Hmm. A vampire and your mother. Could be a match. She's blond, isn't  
she?"

Marshall laughs until the fumes snag his throat shut as tight as two  
strips of Velcro. Then he just coughs. 

"Dude, you might wanna get that checked," the cook says to Marshall,  
tightening the last strip of a butterfly wrap around his wrist. "Don't  
fuck with the Golden Voice, know what I'm sayin'?"

"The Golden Voice," Marshall echoes. Smiling at a fan feels strange.  
"Thanks, man."

"No problem. I was a medic in the army."

"How the fuck you end up working here?"

"Lost a bet, man. Don't never play a ho at poker."

"Sound advice," Wesley says. "Shall we go? There may be other Tokars  
about, though I suspect word travels fast."

Marshall nods. "Just a minute. Told Serla I'd--yeah, here she comes."  
Between pulls on a throat lozenge, he signs CDs for Tyrell, for two of  
their hostess's heads, and for a lit-up floating thing that materializes  
only long enough to drop The Marshall Mathers LP on the rangetop. 

"Come back anytime-ime-ime."

"Hey, what the fuck I look like, Great White? You seriously gotta work on  
the near-death by flames."

Several headsworth of sheepish laughter. "Not even with a gift  
certificate-ate-ate?"

"I suppose we could call it even for the whole blowing-the-shit outta  
your cooler thing."

"Very generous-ous-ous."

***

He asks Wesley as they walk up the street, "So you're telling me there's  
vampires."

"Yes. Werewolves as well."

"This could explain whole branches of my family."

"No, it couldn't," Wesley says, hands in his pockets. A mild rain falls,  
making the cars hiss as they pass. "I've known some quite nice  
werewolves. Everyone has the potential for good and evil, Marshall.  
You've already broken one family tradition."

"Hailie."

"Precisely."

"So to fight the Nameless, I'm not keeping any kind of truth alive. I'm  
keeping the lie."

"There are a lot of part truths, all of them relative. Send enough pings  
out and perhaps you'll see the shape of the whole."

Marshall kicks a stone into the gutter, rainbowing oilstains. "Maybe."

"It's better than nothing."

Marshall smiles. "Anything's better than that."

***


End file.
